Symbiotic Antagonisms: Competing Nationalisms in Turkey
Ayşe Kadioglu,
E. Fuat Keyman
The University of Utah Press
“The authors address the most salient problems and challenges confronting the Republic of Turkey since its inception in 1923... [and] use the latest and most informed theoretical models and conceptual paradigms to buttress their arguments. Afirst-rate scholarly contribution not just regarding conceptual issues of Turkish nationalism, but on the specialty topic of nationalism itself” / — Robert Olson, University of Kentucky
Today, nationalism and nationalist sentiments are becoming more and more pronounced, creating a global emergence of ethno-nationalist and religious fundamentalist identity conflicts. In the post-9/11 era of international terrorism, it is appropriate to suggest that nationalism will retain its central place in politics and local and world affairs for the foreseeable future. It is in this vein that there has been a recent upsurge of interest concerning the power of nationalist tendencies as one of the dominant ideologies of modern times.
Symbiotic Antagonisms looks at the state-centric mode of modernization in Turkey that has constituted the very foundation on which nationalism has acquired its ideological status and transformative power. This volume documents a symposium held at Sabanci University, presenting nationalism as a multidimensional, multiactor-based phenomenon that functions as an ideology, a discourse, and a political strategy. Turkish, Kurdish, and Islamic nationalisms are systematically compared in this timely and significant work.
Ayşe Kadıoğlu is a professor of political science at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey.
E. Fuat Keyman is a professor of international relations at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey.
Contents
Acknowledgments / ix
Introduction: Understanding Nationalism through
Family Resemblances / xi
Ayşe Kadioglu and E. Fuat Keyman
Part I. Turkish Nationalism: Continuity and Change
1. Turkish Nationalism: From a System of Classification / 3
to a System of Solidarity
Șerif Mardin
2. Nationalism in Turkey: Modernity, State, and Identity / 10
E. Fuat Keyman
3. The Twin Motives of Turkish Nationalism / 33
Ayşe Kadioglu
4. Nationalist Discourses in Turkey / 57
Tanıl Bora
5. The Changing Nature of Nationalism in Turkey:
Actors, Discourses, and the Struggle for Hegemony / 82
Umut Özkrımlı
Part II. Conservative Manifestations of Turkish Nationalism
6. The Genealogy of Turkish Nationalism:
From Civic and Ethnic to Conservative Nationalism in Turkey / 103
Umut Uzer
7. On the Question of Islam and Nationalism in Turkey:
Sources and Discourses / 133
Berrin Koyuncu-Lorasdağı
8. Turkish Nationalism and Sunni Islam
in the Construction of Political Party Identities / 162.
Simten Cofar
Part III. Kurdish Nationalism
9. Does Kurdish Nationalism Have a Navel? / 199
Hakan Ozoglu
10. Banditry to Disloyalty:
Turkish Nationalisms and the Kurdish Question / 223
Mesut Yegen
11. Toward a Nonstandard Story:
The Kurdish Question and the Headscarf, Nationalism, and Iraq / 253
Murat Somer
12. Reframing the Nationalist Perspective:
Kurdish Civil Society Activism in Europe / 289
Vera Eccarius-Kelly
Conclusion / 319
Ayşe Kadioglu and E. Fuat Keyman
References / 325
List of Contributors / 357
Index / 363
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The idea of this book emerged in an international symposium that we organized in Istanbul in November 2007 on understanding and exploring competing nationalisms in Turkey. Since that time, we have collectively worked with the contributors in order to put together a coherent and detailed analysis of nationalisms in Turkey. In this cndcavor, we have benefited from the help and collegial support of a number of people. We particularly thank Tuba Karıcı for her valuable effort to finalize the book, Hakan Yavuz for his encouragement about preparing a book on nationalism, Peter DeLa-fosse for his valuable editorial contribution, Kathy Burford Lewis for meticulous editorial assistance, Bora İşyar for his assistance in translating parts of a chapter, and Evren Tok for his help in finalizing one of the chapters. We are also grateful to Sabancı University and Koç University for their financial and organizational support for the symposium that led to this book.
Introduction
Understanding Nationalism through Family Resemblances
Ayşe Kadioğlu and E. Fuat Keyman
The expression “symbiotic antagonisms” promises to be a relevant analytical category for understanding the dynamics of the relationship among various nationalisms. It was first used by Barrington Moore (1966, p. 137) in his seminal book on the social origins of modern dictatorships and democracies. In analyzing the Japanese case, he refers to the relationship between the Japanese merchants and the warrior aristocracy (samurai) as one of symbiotic antagonism. The Japanese merchants turned the rice of the Japanese landowners (daimyo) into cash. The samurai were providing protection to both the daimyo and merchants. Before the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Japanese merchants could engage in commercial activities only if the samurai ensured their protection. The samurai and daimyo, however, needed the merchants to turn their rice into cash and provide the aristocratic lifestyle that they were leading. In other words, they all needed each other to carry on with their activities and way of life. They were deriving their livelihood and lifestyles from one another. Yet, due to a prolonged period of peace and luxury during the Tokugawa Shogunate, merchants stopped needing the samurai and became the dominant partner in the menage d trois of the daimyo, merchant, and samurai. The symbiotic antagonism between the samurai and merchants resulted in the downfall of the former. This development was vital in understanding the subsequent development of fascism in Japan.
Such a dialectical choreography can be useful in comprehending how the existing nationalisms in Turkey that derive their raison d’etre from one another can prepare the conditions for each others continuous reproduction or downfall. Perhaps the difference between the Japanese example and nationalisms in Turkey is that it is very hard for these nationalisms—which derive their livelihood from each other—to lead to one another’s downfall. The imminent antagonism among them occasionally ends in outright military and paramilitary clashes. They have, in fact, the capability to destroy the liberal-democratic political regime while trying to destroy each other.
Understanding Nationalism
Nationalist ideology constitutes one of the key parameters of modern Turkish politics, especially since 1999, when Turkey became an official candidate for membership in the European Union (EU). After this date, various constitutional amendments and other legislative changes were accepted in the Turkish parliament that aimed at the recognition of languages other than Turkish as well as facilitating religious practices other than Sunni Islam. With these developments some of the key elements employed in the definition of Turkish national identity, such as common language and religion, were demystified. This led to a fear on the part of the nationalist groups in Turkey that was enhanced by feelings of insecurity on the part of the appointed state elite (the military and the bureaucratic establishment) since the national elections in November 2001. After those elections, the Justice and Development Party, with a Muslim social base, formed the government in Turkey. The military commanders have been referring to “Islamic fundamentalism” as the biggest threat in Turkey since February 1997. The rise in the popularity of the Justice and Development Party coupled with the acceptance of various legal reforms in the parliament that increased the accountability of the military as part of the European Union membership processes led to the emergence of a discourse of fear on the part of the state elite, afraid of Islamic fundamentalism and the European Union processes.
When we add the increasing tension in the southeast border of Turkey in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, it becomes possible to understand the relevance of a nationalist discourse in Turkey based on a fear of Islam, the European Union, the United States, the Kurds, and all the non-Muslim and non-Turkish identities in Turkey. All these processes placed the tide of nationalism at the center of the political alignments and divisions in Turkey.
It is hard to generalize about the nationalist ideology. It comes in many shapes and sizes. Nationalism is a protean ideology. There are very few characteristics that all nationalisms share. In what follows, we refer to two such characteristics. One of these is the “flirtatious” character of all nationalisms. Nationalism has always been a very flirtatious ideology. In its earliest appearance in Europe during the French Revolution, nationalist ideology flirted with the liberal ideology. Liberals, in fact, were rather enthusiastic in embracing nationalism. This was mainly because of the phenomenon of “self-determination.” Immanuel Kant (1724-1848) proposed the idea that the achievement of freedom on the part of the individual, by resorting to the laws of morality found within rather than the external world, constituted the basis of the point of intersection between liberalism and nationalism. Nations too, like individuals, could be free through self-determination. This idea was a great source of vitality for nationalist ideology. Hence the idea that the authority of the governments could be derived from the governed (the people) became the source of the nationalist ideology in Europe. In the after-math of the French Revolution, the “people” soon became “nations.” In fact, it was in the aftermath of the French Revolution that border controls in Europe, specifically in England, had begun in order to stop the entry of Jacobin revolutionaries. The first modern practices of immigration controls, border patrols, and use of certificates of national identity had emerged at this historical juncture.
By the second half of the nineteenth century, the nationalist ideology was beginning to flirt with conservatism. The conservatives who became critical of the power of the “people” and their revolutionary potential began to express ideas pertaining to social cohesion in nationalist terms. The criticisms of the French Revolution were couched in nationalist language. Hence, while at the beginning nationalism opted for the transfer of power to the people, by the late nineteenth century it aimed at social cohesion and order. In sum, nationalism lost its revolutionary potential and vitality. Such a transformation of the nationalist ideology was expressed astutely by the British archconservative Benjamin Disraeli, whose name was identified with the Tory Party, when he said: “Nations in a state of dissolution become people” (Eccleshall et al. 1986, p. 190). Hence the transformation of the “people” into “nations” was accompanied by the new role that nationalism was about to play: the maintenance of social cohesion and unity among the people.
By the early twentieth century, nationalist ideology was beginning to flirt with Marxism. Although Karl Marx (1818—83) and Friedrich Engels (1820-95) referred to the workers as non-national beings, they still attempted to integrate nationalist struggles into the Communist project. They used an earlier distinction made by G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) between “historic nations” and “nonhistoric nations.” Accordingly, they argued that historic nations played a progressive role by unifying people and territory whereas nonhistoric nations failed to do so. Their views on nationalism became clearer as they evaluated the Polish and Irish struggles for independence. In fact, Marx and Engels embraced Polish nationalism because it would weaken tsarist Russia. They also thought that the Irish nationalist movement geared toward independence would weaken Britain. This opened the way for a distinction between the “nationalism of the oppressors” and the “nationalism of the oppressed.” Such a distinction was sharply drawn by V. I. Lenin (1870-1924), who argued for the right to self-determination of oppressed nations. These distinctions among different types of nationalism are important, because they seem to point to a distinction between “good” and “bad” nationalisms.
Accordingly, the nationalism of the oppressed is viewed as good because it involves a transfer of power to the people akin to the nationalist ideology at the time of the French Revolution. Yet it is also possible to argue that all nationalisms including those of the oppressed are bad because they all point to a distinction between “us” and “them.”
A second common characteristic of all nationalisms is that they are not natural but rather modern constructs that were manufactured, in most cases, by the national intelligentsia. When Yusuf Akçura (1876-1935) advocated Turkism in 1904 in an article that was published in a journal in Egypt called Türk, he thought of it as the best project (the others being Ottomanism and Islamism) that would lead to the preservation of the Ottoman state. This epoch-making article is considered the first essay that professed Turkish nationalism as a political project. It is highly interesting that at this particular juncture in history the main raison d’etre of nationalism was enunciated as the preservation of the state rather than the transfer of power to the people. Such an introduction of nationalist ideology in the Ottoman society was to have a major impact on its subsequent evolution. The distinction between the nationalism of the oppressors and the nationalism of the oppressed is still used today in pointing to a distinction among the Turkish, Kurdish, and Islamic nationalisms. On the one hand, it is possible to argue that Turkish nationalism has an unjust discourse by virtue of advocating social cohesion at the national level to the point of excluding and assimilating minorities while Kurdish nationalism and Islamic nationalism employ a just discourse and opt for a transfer of power to the people. On the other hand, it is also possible to argue that all nationalisms have the potential to exclude and assimilate. Such commonalities make it impossible to refer to the compatibility of any form of nationalism with democracy.
This book constitutes one of the first systematic comparisons of different types of nationalism in Turkey: Turkish, Kurdish, and Islamic nationalisms. These nationalisms have encountered one another throughout modern Turkish history. It is such encounters that led to their perpetual reproduction. While they were rival ideologies, they were making use of encounters with one another not only to reproduce each another but also to constitute a hegemonic discourse in Turkey. Although mutual encounters of these nationalisms produced various tensions, it was, in fact, these very tensions that made their continuous survival possible. Nationalisms thrive on soils that are able to generate “others” over time through exclusion as well as assimilation. In this sense, in the course of the contemporary history of Turkey, these nationalisms have always acted in a relational and intertwined way as competing and essentially contested discourses of Turkish modernity and politics.
Family Resemblances
Despite all the debates about nationalism touched upon throughout the book, it is important to specify from the outset how we approach nationalism. In doing so, six “family resemblances” are worth mentioning. First, as one of the founding philosophers of feminism and existentialism, Simone de Beauvoir (1989 [1949], p. 167), suggests: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Similarly, we suggest in this book that one is not born, but rather becomes, a nationalist. In this sense, nationalism is socially, historically, ideologically, anthropologically, institutionally, and politically constructed.
Second, on the basis of the fundamental principle of critical realism that there is a difference between appearance and essence, nationalism operates at the level of lived reality rather than involving efforts to explore the essential or concealed sources of societal processes and problems. For instance, as in the case of the debates about the rise of unemployment in Europe or North America, the nationalist assumption that establishes a causal relationship between migrants and unemployment stays at the level of appearances and hence appeals to the lived reality and experience of the society rather than searching for the structural and essential sources of unemployment.
Third, the fact that nationalism operates at the level of appearance does not mean that it lacks effectiveness and power. On the contrary, the nationalist discourse is very powerful in constituting the relationship between the subject and the other, the subject and nature, and the subject and herself/ himself. It is through its appeal to lived experiences that nationalism constitutes a community based on we/us versus they/them as the other. Moreover, in creating a community identity through the principle of sameness, nationalism codifies difference as the dangerous other to be resisted or silenced. In this sense, nationalism always operates as a boundary-producing practice between the self and the other as well as between identity and difference.
Fourth, in creating a sheltered, warm, and protected community for its followers, nationalism always establishes and reproduces a feeling of insecurity, fear, and resentment against the others who are outside of the boundaries of the community. In this sense, as Zygmunt Baumann (2007, p. 37) suggests, nationalism speaks as “I shout and I resent, therefore I am” rather than promoting critical thinking as the basis of existence.
Fifth, nationalism is not only an ideology but also a strategy utilized by different actors, groups, and communities in their search to strengthen their own communitarian identities. In this sense, the distinctions made in regard to different nationalisms in the existing literature on nationalism—between “good” and “bad” nationalisms, nationalisms of the “oppressor” and the “oppressed,” “civic” or “ethnic” nationalisms—are not immune from these constitutive features of nationalism.
Last but not least, these family resemblances of different manifestations of nationalism portray the crucial point about its endurance and ability to be pervasive in modern times despite all the changes and transformations. This renders nationalism an ever-present ideology with a hegemonic character. Hence it is imperative to recognize its ability to endure in modernity rather than assuming that nationalism “rises” and “falls” in various periods.
The Structure of This Book
The main endeavor of this book is to explore the encounters among competing nationalisms in Turkey. To recognize competing nationalisms does not ignore the historically dominant position of Turkish nationalism. This book starts with Şerif Mardin’s exploration of the endurance of nationalism in the Ottoman-Turkish context as it evolves from a system of classification to a system of solidarity.
In chapter 2 Fuat Keyman attempts to read different paradigms of Turkish modernity in order to establish a historical and analytical framework for an understanding of how nationalism has endured and also has been subject to changes and modifications. Keyman traces the role of nationalism in Turkey’s journey in modernity since 1923, including the processes of democratization, globalization, and Europeanization. This brief historical account of the intertwined relationship between nationalism and modernity also provides a background for the chapters to follow.
In chapter 3 Ayşe Kadıoğlu substantiates this intertwined relationship between modernity and nationalism by focusing on the twin motives of Turkish nationalism: the preservation of the state and Westernism. Kadıoğlu maintains that these two motives as spelled out by two critical thinkers (Yusuf Akçura and Ahmed Ağaoğlu) at the turn of the twentieth century constitute the root-language of all subsequent nationalisms in Turkey. Kadıoğlu also considers whether the twin motives of Turkish nationalism that were visible at the time of its emergence are still relevant today.
In chapter 4 Tanil Bora elaborates on the role of nationalism in Turkish modernity by exploring its recent manifestations. Bora’s exploration provides the reader with a very illuminating analysis of the competing discourses of Turkish nationalism that covers a wide spectrum, ranging from official and left-wing versions of Kemalist nationalism to neo-conservative and neo-liberal nationalism as well as ultra-right, isolationist, and ethnicist national discourses. Bora’s discussion of competing discourses of Turkish nationalism also serves as the basis for a critical reading of the myth that Turkey represents a homogeneous nation.
In chapter 5 Umut Özkırımh draws together a Gramscian reading of nationalism and the topographical approach of Jean Pierre Faye and attempts to deconstruct this myth as well as the ideas of the civic versus ethnic nationalism and the “rise” and “fall” of the nationalist discourse over time in Turkey. In doing so, Özkırımlı provides a topography of nationalist discourses in Turkey to illuminate the dynamics of the ongoing struggle for hegemony over the nation by various social and political forces at the turn of the twenty-first century. This particular reading places the emphasis on the protean nature of nationalism and presents it as a field of positions in which different and often competing narratives circulate.
One of the significant domains in which Turkish nationalism has been reproduced and reconstructed involves the relationship between conservatism and nationalism in general and Islam and nationalism in particular. In chapter 6 Umut Uzer provides a historical and analytical exploration of such relationships. In doing so, he discusses the emergence of Turkish nationalism in the late nineteenth century as well as the main proponents of nationalism such as Ziya Gökalp and Yusuf Akçura and other important figures, including Hüseyin Nihal Atsız and Ibrahim Kafesoğlu. He maintains that conservative nationalism entails a reference to traditional and moral values, thereby giving religion a central role in the definition of national identity.
In chapter 7 Berrin Koyuncu-Lorasdağı furthers Uzer’s analysis of conservative nationalism by providing an overview of the interplay of Islam and nationalism from the late Ottoman era onward. She focuses on the discourses of key Turkish nationalist figures who attempted to incorporate Islam into their nationalistic views and traces how this interaction has been articulated in the Turkish-Islamic synthesis since the 1980s. Koyuncu-Lorasdağı argues that Islam and Turkish nationalism have had a symbiotic and instrumental relationship in Turkey, where their mutual benefits have been endorsed, and that this articulation of Islam and nationalism can be called instrumental pious nationalism. She further suggests that Islam has always been an indispensable element of the discourse of nationalism in Turkey. The constant presence of Islam as one of the defining elements of the nationalist discourses in Turkey can also be observed in Turkish politics, especially with reference to ultra-right and center-right political parties.
In chapter 8 Simten Coşar elaborates this point in detail. Coşar analyzes the role of conservative nationalism in the strategies, programs, and discourses of three political parties: the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Grand Unity Party (BBP), and Nationalist Action Party (MHP). Analyzing these political parties’ discourses of nationalism as well as the encounters among them, Coşar reveals the political significance of Sunni Islam as an ingredient of Turkish nationalism, which has also given rise to the use of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis as an effective political strategy by which these parties attempt to widen their social bases.
Finally, this book also analyzes Kurdish nationalism and its historical and political encounters with Turkish nationalism. In doing so, we start with the question of the origins and genealogy of Kurdish nationalism. Separating Kurdish identity from Kurdish nationalism, in chapter 9 Hakan Ozoğlu suggests that Kurdish nationalism was not the result of an evolutionary process; it was, in fact, constructed at a certain time in history. This means that Kurdish nationalisms link with the past was not organic; rather it was historically and institutionally constructed at the end of World War I. Ozoğlu also argues that Kurdish movements had existed prior to this time but were not nationalist. It was only at the end of World War I that we could begin to identify Kurdish nationalism as an ethnic-based nationalism that has given rise to the creation of a Kurdish identity.
In fact, Turkish nationalism and its approach to the Kurdish question on the basis of an “us” versus “them” distinction have played a crucial role in the construction of Kurdish identity. In chapter 10 Mesut Yeğen takes up this issue and examines the ways in which “mainstream,” “extreme right-wing,” and “left-wing” versions of Turkish nationalism have viewed the Kurdish question. Yeğen’s chapter shows that the Kurdish question has been perceived by means of a rich vocabulary, including terms such as “resistance of the past,” “banditry,” “political reactionary,” “regional backwardness,” and “foreign incitement.” Despite existing differences, Yeğen argues, the idea that the Kurds are Turks-to-be and that the Kurdish question may basically be solved by means of assimilation has remained a constant theme in Turkish nationalist discourses. But he also demonstrates the changes that have taken place in recent years regarding the perception of Kurds in the Turkish nationalist discourses: the increasing characterization of Kurds as “disloyal” in the Turkish nationalist discourses.
The historical context in which the term “disloyalty” enters the agenda of the Turkish nationalist discourses about the Kurdish question is what has come to be called the post-9/11 world in general and the invasion of Iraq in particular. This historical context has also brought a new dimension to Kurdish nationalism: the possibility of an autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq. In chapter 11 Murat Somer deals with both internal and external dimensions of Kurdish nationalism with special reference to the novelties of the post-9/11 world, in which a pronounced ethnic dimension of Kurdish identity became more visible. This chapter illustrates the encounters between Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms in a more ethnically defined and contested arena. Somer maintains that it is important to distinguish between the Kurdish question and the Kurdish conflict: while the former might have been a product of nationalism and modernization, the latter results from structures and political decisions.
One of the neglected areas in studying Kurdish nationalism has been the question of the Kurdish Diaspora in Europe and its role in recent ethnicization of Kurdish nationalism. In chapter 12 Vera Eccarius-Kelly explores the ways in which Diaspora Kurdish expressions of nationalism in Europe have influenced and shaped the public discourse on the future of the Kurds in Turkey. Kurdish collective activism has succeeded in connecting the language of victimization to public discourses on Turkish membership in the European Union. The Kurdish Diaspora’s ability to assert power by controlling and managing nationalist articulations stands out. Yet its capacity to influence Kurdish nationalists inside Turkey, to shape and to inspire new manifestations of interconnected local, regional, and global repertoires of collective protest action, requires further examination. The Diaspora’s challenges represent a modified version of ethnic nationalism, as Kurds increasingly focus on cultural and linguistic expressions of identity rather than on a preoccupation with territorial boundaries.
All these chapters have been designed to portray the different manifestations of nationalism in Turkey. Operating as symbiotic antagonisms, these manifestations reveal the choreography of Turkish modernity and the defining role that nationalism plays in it. In this sense, we hope to enlarge the domain of social and political studies of Turkey by introducing one of the most neglected dimensions: critical analysis of encounters among competing claims to nationalism in Turkey. We also hope that this discussion of symbiotic antagonisms produced and reproduced by discourses of nationalism will contribute to the debates about and searches for a democratic disclosure in Turkish politics and modernity.
Notes
In trying to outline the “family resemblances” of differerent nationalisms (â la Ludwig Wittgenstein) we were inspired by a similar endeavor by Umberto Eco (1995) about fascisms in Europe.
Part I
Turkish Nationalism: Continuity and Change
1
Turkish Nationalism
From a System of Classification to a System of Solidarity
Şerif Mardin
The following chapter presents the outlines of a rough frame that I believe can be further developed for an understanding of the process of modernization in Turkey. It is a summary of the ideas that I have acquired in the last fifty years by studying the relationship of the Ottoman Empire, Islam, and the thrust of modernity.
In no way, however, does this chapter claim to establish a detailed historical account of the relations between Ottoman society and the state during the many centuries that I cover. A few years ago I developed the idea that an understanding of modern Turkish politics would require knowledge of the structure of the Ottoman Empire. I underlined the idea of a bipolar structure, of the center and the periphery. This was not a terribly original idea. A number of historians had developed the concept of an Ottoman Empire working with two structural components: the military and the nonmilitary (İnalcık 1994, pp. 16-17). A latent, unstated, but important element of the bipolarity, however, had escaped notice: that the Ottoman Empire could be studied as a system of social classification. To my knowledge, this theme has never been developed.
The Ottoman map of sociopolitical relations was a static one, but it nevertheless allows today’s observer to begin investigations with a new venue into the study of Turkish modernity. I propose that the Ottoman Empire may be seen as an enormous system of classification. Not only askeri (military) …
